Life lessons learnt and shared with my niece, Lottie Mia

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#1 Learn to drive

Or don’t. But if given the choice. Learn. Especially if you stay around Warwick, it’ll make your life so much easier. Your mum mastered this at the age of 18. She arrived at work one day proudly jangling her car keys, a newly passed driver. In my eyes, a genius. Thank god one of us learnt, we used to rely on her old little silver KA to run us around Warwick, go shopping in 24 hour Tescos and do the occasional road-trip. I’m sure you’ll be a much better learner driver than me, it’s in your blood.

Now don’t get me wrong Lottie. I did try. I tried really quite incredibly hard. I had a driving instructor called Graham. He was northern and of a very calm disposition. So when I did things like shoot on to a roundabout at 60 miles per hour, or career towards a curb head on at full speed, he’d calmly perform an emergency stop, take a deep breath and say (in a Yorkshire accent):

“Now, I’ve just done an emergency stop, because if we’d have carried on at that speed, in that direction, you’d have killed us both. Let’s try again.”

After a total of 39 driving lessons I admitted defeat and moved to London. You can actually get away living in London without a car, because the tubes are so tremendously wonderful. Currently (in 2013) they run until 12pmish, and even if you miss the last one (which I do, ALL the time) the buses run all night, so you can always get home. Although, as your Auntie Spudge, I’d like to say should you ever live in London, and miss the last tube, please get a cab, and send me the invoice. I’ve seen some things on night buses not really suitable for my eyes; most certainly not yours. Saying that, I’ve also made some very good friends on night buses, some I’ve even stayed in touch with. Still, please take a cab. And a pre-booked one as well. Or in fact, I’ll get an account with Addison Lee, and you can just call them, and bill it to my account, okay?